


I Tried Carrying the Weight of the World (but I only had two hands)

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series, immediately after the explosion, maybe they'll be better together, they're not doing so well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 03:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12718719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: In the days after the particle accelerator explosion, Cisco's feeling more and more lost as the life he thought was so good collapses around him. But he knows one person who's in a worse place, and that's Caitlin Snow.





	I Tried Carrying the Weight of the World (but I only had two hands)

**Author's Note:**

> For a Tumblr prompt from the 100 Ways to Say I Love You list, “I was in the neighborhood.” I kind of love thinking about the nine months in between the explosion and Barry waking up, because Cisco and Caitlin had only each other to hold onto at their worst and darkest. And also because Cisco is so happy and cheerful that you forget he lost almost as much as Caitlin did that day.
> 
> Also if you read this on Tumblr, you know I changed the title, because after I posted I found my notes for The! Perfect!! Title!!! This one is a lyric from "Wake Me Up" by Avicii.

Cisco leaned against the wall of the elevator, watching the light roll up the number line to Caitlin’s floor. He glanced at his phone. He’d sent her three or four texts this week, but hadn’t gotten an answer.

Her workplace had blown sky-high and killed seventeen people, including her fiance. Her career and her life were in shambles. Was it weird that she didn’t feel chatty?

Not that he was doing so great. People were fleeing from his life right and left. The co-workers who weren’t in the hospital - or the ground - had all quit as quickly as possible. His phone was full of people telling him he was a piece of shit for working at Star Labs - family members, so-called friends, even his dentist’s office.

Like. That was low, man. His dentist had dumped him.

Maybe that was why he was coming here. He might run the risk of gingivitis for the next little while, but for sure, Caitlin was doing worse.

He rang the bell and stuck his hands in his pockets. After a few minutes, he rocked back and forth on his heels. Was she out?

He knocked.

He knocked again.

He leaned on the bell.

He was still leaning on it when the door popped open. Caitlin stared at him like she’d never seen a fellow human being before. “… Cisco?”

“Hey,” he said feebly. “Caitlin.”

Her hair looked limp and greasy. Her eyes were dull, and her eye makeup was smudged like she’d slept in it. For about three days.

And not to put too fine a point on it … she kinda stank.

“Can I come in?”

“What is it? What are you doing here?”

“I was in the neighborhood.”

“Doing what?”

“Can I come in?”

She looked like she wanted to say no, but she stepped back.

When he walked in, he was shocked all over again, although after getting a look at her, maybe he shouldn’t’ve been. Caitlin was a neatnik. She liked things in their place. But there were clothes strewn around, shoes jumbled every which way, fossilized coffee cups and half-full water bottles lined up on the coffee table. He counted at least five breakfast bars, her food of choice when she wasn’t hungry but thought she should eat anyway, in varying states of partially consumed.

He thought he recognized the shoes and the dress she’d worn to the funeral, crumpled over near the fireplace, like she’d yanked them off the moment she stepped in the door a week ago, dropped them, and pretended they didn’t exist ever since then.

She was wearing a Metropolis University t-shirt that was way too big in the shoulders and hit her mid-thigh. His heart twisted when he remembered that she’d gone to University of Coast City. It was Ronnie who’d gone to Met U.

And - Holy shit, was Caitlin Fashion Plate Snow actually wearing ratty pajama bottoms under it?

She crossed her arms over her chest, and he tried to look like he saw her in her ratsos all the time. “What is it?”

“Told you. Just came by to see how you were doing.”

“How do you think I’m doing?”

“Pretty sucky,” he said, looking around.

“Why did you come here?”

“I told you. I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“You got your answer. Sucky. You can go now.”

“You think I’m gonna go, seeing this?”

“And what do you think you’re going to do about it?”

“I - I don’t - “

She grimaced and nodded. “Mmmhm. Classic Cisco. I know the way you are. You like to fix things. You like neat solutions that you can reveal like a magician revealing their rabbit.”

“That’s not why I’m here.”

“It’s not? Tell the truth. Didn’t you picture yourself coming in with some comforting words, and I would burst into tears and have a long cleansing sob on your shoulder and then be all better?”

He actually took a step back. Caitlin was like a knife sometimes, cutting things open to show the ugly insides that you’d been hoping like hell nobody would notice. “I don’t - I don’t know. Maybe. Look, I know I can’t fix this. I can’t bring Ronnie back or stop the explosion. But I can make sure you’re not alone right now.”

“Maybe I like being alone!” she yelled.

“Then maybe I’m here because _I_ don’t want to be alone!” he yelled back. “Everybody around me is leaving. My dentist dumped me! _My fucking dentist!_ There isn’t one asshole who’s making the smallest bit of effort to be there for me, and maybe that’s why I’m here, because I’m hoping that at least one person will need me enough to return the favor.”

His voice echoed off the ceiling.

She stared at him, dead-eyed. “Why do you think I can give you anything you need?”

“Because you’ve always been more than people thought you were,” he said. “Warmer, stronger, kinder. More. Even now. You’re more than - ” He looked around. “This.”

“What if I tell you to go?”

“Are you?”’

“I’m saying what if.”

“Then I’ll go, I guess,” he said. “But I’ll be in the neighborhood again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. I’ll set up camp in the neighborhood. I’ll get a PO Box. I’ll put up Christmas decorations. I - ”

“Okay,” she interrupted. “Okay. I get it. You made your point. You can end the metaphor.”

“Should I go?”

She drifted toward the couch and slid down to sit. “No,” she said.

He risked sitting down next to her. “No?”

“I don’t really want to be alone,” she whispered. “It’s just - what I do, though.” She looked at him. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Me neither,” he said.

She sighed and leaned into him. He rested his weight on her. They sat on her couch, holding each other up, staring into space.

“You, uh, might wanna start with a shower,” he suggested, very very delicately, after some minutes of breathing through his mouth. “Just a thought.”

She picked up a chunk of her hair and sniffed it, and visibly recoiled. “Right,” she said. “Shower.” She pushed herself to her feet.

Halfway across the room, she turned. “What did you mean your dentist dumped you?”

He shrugged. “I mean, they called and said not to bother coming to my cleaning next week because they’d stopped accepting my insurance.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “We have Delta. Everyone takes Delta.”

“I know, right?” He picked up a breakfast bar that was growing something and tossed it into the nearest trash can. “It’s rough out there, Caitlin. People don’t like Star Labs much anymore.”

“The condo association is kicking me out for about ten things that suddenly became violations the day after the explosion,” she said, continuing on her way to the shower. “Believe me. I know.”

He grimaced and threw away another breakfast bar.

Yeah, they might be the most unpopular people in Central City right now. But they had each other. That was something.

* * *

_Three years later_

Caitlin clutched her phone as she climbed the stairs to Cisco’s loft. No matter how many times she read the texts from him, her heart broke all over again

_Dante’s dead_

_Won’t be in tomorrow_

_Don’t know when_

She couldn’t fix this. Barry could, but wouldn’t. All she could do was be there for Cisco, and hope that her presence would keep him from falling to pieces, or try and help him put himself back together.

She lifted her hand to knock and saw a whisper of mist, floating off her knuckles. She cringed and looked away, trying to convince herself that it was an optical illusion, even though her hands got so cold lately.

She didn’t have time for that right now. None of them had time for that right now.

She knocked once and waited. She knocked again, and waited some more.

She lifted her hand, hammered it into the door, and kept doing it until it popped open and Cisco said, _“What.”_

He looked awful. He had bags under his eyes, his hair was all frizz, and his shirt had a stain the shape of Italy over his sternum.

His scowl faded. “Caitlin - ”

“Hi,” she said softly. “I was in the neighborhood.”

FINIS


End file.
